Patchwork birthday banner

Alright friends, I'm ready to unveil The Project. I started working on The Project back in November, after stumbling across it here. Sarah Barry is a blog friend of mine, and she's just incredible. I've gotten so many sewing ideas from her. Her blog is so fun and real...check her out, and I dare you not to fall in love!

Anyway, I was searching for the perfect homemade gift for Elizabeth's first birthday. I knew I'd hit paydirt when I found this patchwork-style "happy birthday" banner...just what I was looking for. It's colorful, homespun, and something I hope they'll enjoy for years to come. Oh, and it's twelve feet long. Go big or go home, people!

Do me a favor and get a drumroll going before you see the pictures. Got it? You ready??

{boy side...Buddy and Dorothy in their supervisory positions, making sure everything stays under control}

{girl side}

This project was so fun and quite easy. It's a bit labor-intensive (lots of cutting and ironing) but I would absolutely recommend it for a beginner. I don't think I'll post a step-by-step tutorial (unless anyone is desperate for one) because Sarah Barry already did that beautifully in her post. I did vary in a couple of ways:

*I do the Wonder-Under step differently, but it all works out just the same in the end.

*I used storebought spool ribbon instead of making ribbon from scraps. This is partly because I didn't have that many scraps and partly (actually, mostly) because I'm lazy when it comes to sewing scraps together to make a ribbon.

I met Kira and Elizabeth in Montgomery yesterday evening to deliver the banner and...

I think they liked it.

Let me know if you have any questions! I'd be happy to answer them...I'm on fire with banner love these days :) If you make your own, PLEASE be sure to share a picture! I'd love to see different takes on this.

Happy Wednesday, yall!

Well hey there, Monday!

This is what one of my sweet students, Fred, said this morning when he looked at the calendar. He told me that saying hey to Mondays makes it easier to get through them. He told me he says, "Well hey there, Monday!" in his head every week, but let it slip out loud today. Alrighty then. I love that kid and really hope he's planning to forgo sixth grade to stay with me next year.

You know what? Monday wasn't so bad once I properly greeted it. Try it next week; it may just change your attitude about Mondays.

*I finished The Project yesterday. I've been working on it since Novemeber, but there's been much procrastination since then. I'm fixin' to bust a gut to post pictures, but I want Kira to be surprised when she sees it. So, here are a few teasers...

{Please be kind and overlook the blurriness. It's a Monday and my hands refused to stay still.}

*Counting tomorrow, there are eight schooldays left before summer break. My fourth year of teaching is nearly in the history books. Time. Flies.

*This time next week, I'll be watching the premiere of "The Bachelorette". I'm way, way, ridiculously excited. I shouldn't like that dumb ol' show, but I do.

*I have large plans for the summer, and they largely consist of doing nothing and whatever I want to, all rolled into one. I think those are the best kinds of plans.

*Today was an unseasonably cool, dark cloud kinda day. I'm loving this cool weather and cloudy days make me happy. Is that weird? Maybe I should live in England. I visited there once and kinda fell in love...I'll look into this.

*I bought some watermelon at Publix yesterday, and I've nearly finished all of it. I won't mention how much I've consumed because, well, you'd likely be appalled and never come back here again and that would be a travesty. I could eat watermelon three times a day every day and never get sick of it.

*I learned what pentultimate means today. I'd heard it before but never knew what it meant. I heard it while watching the shuttle launch pre-game before the schoolbabies arrived this morning and looked it up. I love learning new words. It's my goal to use it in conversation at least eleven times this week...I'll report back.

*I watched the shuttle launch pre-game on the news this morning with the grandest of plans to let the students watch the pentultimate (one tally mark on my list, please) space flight. Then, I completely forgot about it. I didn't realize it until about 6:00 this evening. "A" for effort, though, right??

*Did I mention there are eight more days left in school?

Happy week, yall!

Mama's Day, and a little something I sewed up

I love Mother's Day, and I feel thankful that I have two lovely ladies to celebrate. My Mama and my Mimi are some of my favorite people on the planet. They've been wonderful examples for me of Christian wives and mothers. They've shown me how to handle illness, loss, and hardships gracefully. They've shown me how to have lots and lots of fun. They think I'm fabulous all the time, no matter what. They make me feel special, and I love them dearly.

{Mimi, I promise we'll try this one again soon. This was the only one out of the five we took where everybody had an entire head and at least one eye open!}

The Tuscaloosa family got together tonight to eat supper and celebrate Mama and Mimi. After all the tornado trauma, I praise the Lord that we could be together like this.

Daniel's dog Frazier joined us from the backyard. He makes that face all the time. He's one of the top 5 happiest dogs on the planet. Seriously, check the list...you'll find him there. He's also incapable of standing still for any length of time...hence, this picture.

Daniel was telling us about the scholarship ceremony he's going to Tuesday (woohoo...Bubba got him some schoolin' money!) and was searching for a tie. This led to a discussion about how he can't tie a tie. Daddy decided to give him a tutorial...again...for the fifty-seventh time. I've been witness to a handful of these tutorials, and I'm convinced that Daniel forgets on purpose, just to be difficult. That's the way he rolls.

{"What are you doing??? You're gonna run out of tie!"}

{Don't you untie that before Tuesday!}

{Still so thankful he's safe and alive and well. I say that so much that I know it gets on his nerves. I just don't care :)}

One thing I love about my mama is that, when it comes to presents, she's very easy to please. She says she'd rather spend time with us than get presents, and she truly means that. Still, you gotta get your mama something for Mother's Day!

She just loves those little rice heating pads you heat up in the microwave. Lately, she's been using one of Daniel's old soccer socks with a knot tied in it. Not cute. Not cute at all, and I couldn't let that go on a second longer.

I found a tutorial online, and just had to give it a shot. Truth be told, I deviated wildly from the tutorial, but it gave me a great place to start. I mixed the rice with chamomile/mint tea, and I really like the way it all turned out.

A couple of tips:

*I used a 2 lb. bag of long-grain rice for each heating pad...1 cup per section. I used 1/2 tea bag in each section.

*Definitely follow the directions and sew each section 3/4 of the way and then add rice. When I first started, I filled with rice first and then sewed, thinking it would be faster. It was an epic failure. Don't be like me. Accept that Darby is smarter than you, and just do things right the first time.

Check out the rest of Darby's blog if you haven't already. It's fabulous and so is she. Plus, she's a fellow Auburn girl. What's not to love?

**************************************************************************

Thanks for letting me drag you through one of the most random and least-focused posts that's ever spewed forth from my keyboard. I'll get back on track with my D.C. trip recap tomorrow...I know yall have been waiting on pins and needles!

Happy Mama's Day to all those mamas and mamas-to-be out there!

Craftastic

Meet the craft that consumed four hours of my life today:

(Try not to be jealous of my cutting-edge hanging system...patent pending.)

You like? I'm a large fan of the finished product...perfect for spring! I got the idea from this super duper blog, and as fun as it was to make, I have a question.

Is there something wrong with me?

You don't have to answer that honestly; I have feelings too, you know! It just seems that, well, things take much longer than they should when I'm crafting. I mean, four hours??? True, you do have to cut out all of those tiny circles and hot glue them together with a button, then hot glue them on the wreath. Plus, the burlap was a booger to get all cut up.

But still...four hours? I'm sure this would be a quicker process if the circles were pre-cut. Anybody care to cut out the rest of my circles? I've got two more wreaths to make. Anybody? Hello? No takers?

Aside from being a time-consuming endeavor, this wreath was mucho fun to make and I'm pretty tickled with it. I think the burlap makes it look rustic and delightfully homespun. My mind is absolutely swimming with potential color combinations. Red and green for Christmas...red, white, and blue for 4th of July...team colors...endless. Don't you think this would be a charming baby shower decoration? Quick! Somebody have a baby, stat!

Somebody else try this, time yourself, and report back to let me know if I'm (vaguely) normal or an absolute snail.

And if you're at all a lover of crafts, check out the rest of this website...I dare you not to be inspired!

Spring break's #1 fan,
Julie

Up to my eyeballs

...in salt dough. This crazy teacher decided to let her 27 students have a mixing/stirring/sloshing/kneading/flouring/big-fat-mess-making/rolling/cutting/aw-do-we-really-have-to-clean-all-this-up? kinda party today. It was a large, large mess. And it was so fun. We baked the ornaments at school, and I came home and made some extras juuuust in case. I imagine that at least one precious little ornament will break or be deemed otherwise unacceptable during the painting process tomorrow, and I'm packin' plenty of back-ups. Save the tears, kiddos...Ms. J is prepared!

If any mamas or teachers (or plain ol' regular people who can't get enough dough crafts in their life) want to try it out, this recipe was great!

Salt Dough
1/2 cup salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup warm water

Mix together all ingredients until a dough is formed. If the dough is too sticky or batter-like, sprinkle in flour. If the dough is too dry, add a bit of water.

Flour a surface and knead the dough on it. Knead until the dough is soft, smooth, and elastic.

Roll the dough to 1/2"-1/4" thickness, adding flour as needed.

Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Take a toothpick and whittle out a hole at the top...make the hole a little bigger than you think you need. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, and bake at 200 for about 2 hours. They don't rise or spread much, so no worries about placing them too close to each other. Check every 30 minutes or so to flip the ornaments. (We didn't flip the ones we did at school, and we really needed to. Plus we used the cafeteria's commercial oven, and that big girl doesn't mess around. I think they baked too fast. The ones I've got in the oven here at home look smoother and overall prettier.)

Let the ornaments cool and dry completely; there should be no mushy spots. Decorate with acrylic paint and let dry. If you wish, finish off with a coat of Mod Podge to seal and add some shine. String a ribbon through the hole and deck your halls!

Sew fun

 These are the fabrics I'm using in my top-secret sewing project for this angel baby. I'm pretty sure I like shopping for fabric as much as I like sewing...so many beautiful patterns to pick from! I've started working on just a tiny bit of The Project, and I think I'm going to LOVE the way it looks when it's done. I hope I do, anyway! It's for Princess Elizabeth's first birthday (in, uh, May...I jumped the gun a little) so I'll have to wait until then to unveil it. I'm thinking I've found a new favorite project, though!

Feelin' a little crafty

I've been in a crafty mood lately. I found a wreath tutorial here and decided to make one of my own yesterday. It was very easy, just time-consuming. Like, I watched "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in the time it took me to make this bad boy, time-consuming. (Side note: I adore those movies, don't you?) It was fun, though. I may make one for myself someday with non-Christmas ribbon. My super cool parents are the lucky recipients of this little guy.

(I took all of these pictures with Nikki. We're still getting to know each other. Excuse the occasional blurriness.)

Let's get to it! (Click the link above for specific directions.)

Step 1: Cut a million bajillion pieces of ribbon. (You could use whatever you wanted, but I think the finished product has more visual interest if you mix different textures and widths of ribbon.)
Step 2: Make loops with your ribbon pieces, stick a pin through them, and jab them on your wreath one color at a time. Don't quit and throw it away when your wreath looks as hideous as in the picture below. It does indeed shape up by the end!

Step 3: Keep jabbing.

Step 4: Jab some more.

Step 5: Ignore the fact that you're developing calluses from pushing all those pins. Continue to jab.

Step 6: Jab in ribbon loops until your wreath is sufficiently full. Attach a ribbon for hanging (didn't get there with mine yet) and hang 'er up!

Just sew sew...

I think I was getting a little bored with the "same old, same old". And honestly, maybe I was getting a little cocky. I mean, I taught my own self how to sew. I can crank out burp cloths, bibs, and headbands like a machine. So I decided to branch out. Yesterday, on my day off, after crossing off everything on my to-do list, I decided to make myself a throw pillow. I found a great tutorial, bought the world's cutest fabric, and set to it. Two hours later, I was nearly in tears, with a much-too-long, impossible-to-sew-up "throw pillow".

My task: I needed to sew 3 buttonholes. My dilemma: I don't know how to sew buttonholes. I practiced and practiced and still couldn't get it. No problem...I just sewed on the buttons by hand, not realizing that the buttonholes are IMPERATIVE to making this work.

So now she's unfinished, and will remain that way until I gather up the motivation to finish what I started. Sometimes, we all need to be humbled a bit.

Oh well, at least the fabric and buttons are cute!